I Love You More: A Novel (15 page)

“I’m an architect,” Jewels said. “You know damn well that requires a college degree.”

“Yeah, an undergraduate degree,” Bert said. “And just because you can draw a few angles, it doesn’t mean you’re smart.”

Diana covered her ears with her hands. “Stop it.”

Two sets of eyes shot in her direction; Diana was never the least bit confrontational.

“You seem a little frazzled today, Diana,” Jewels said. “Is something bothering you?”

Diana didn’t respond right away. She fought back tears. “You were right, Jewels. What you said about Oliver having seen me at that martini bar before. He did.”

“How do you know?” Jewels asked.

“We were just talking, reminiscing about how we met, and he said something about falling in love with me the first time he saw me sitting at that table. I almost corrected him, said I was sitting at the bar not a table when we met, but then—I don’t know—I just didn’t.”

“Maybe he was confused,” Bert said.

“That’s what I thought at first,” Diana said. “But then he mentioned something about some guy trying to pick us up, meaning my friend Lillian and me, and he described the guy. And it hit me: He
had
seen me before we met. Lillian and I
were
sitting at that corner table, only it was a few weeks earlier. Lillian even ended up going out with the guy. Lillian and I were talking about the guy while we were sitting at the bar that night, the night I met Oliver. In fact, that’s what made me notice Oliver. He was sitting at that same corner table with some redhead.”

When it came to love, although Jewels was the most romantic among us, Diana was the most trusting and thus the slowest to believe in Oliver’s duplicity. While she hadn’t shared it with us, she blamed herself, not Oliver, for his indiscretions. Perhaps she hadn’t been attentive enough, she thought. After all, men will be men. Underneath all their bravado they were just little boys who needed nurturing, weren’t they? She’d been distant of late, too involved in Junior League, too attuned to Picasso’s needs. She was certain if she changed, started doing sweet things for him (he loved salted caramel ice cream and freshly pressed pillowcases), became more amorous, made herself attractive for him, wore that perfume he liked, told him more often how much she loved him,
needed him, perhaps even whined—he always said he loved it when she whined, that he found it so feminine—then their relationship would change for the better. They’d get close again. He wouldn’t need Jewels or Bert. They’d go on as if nothing had happened, as if his other lives had never existed. Of course she’d never mention she’d known about them; that wouldn’t be wise. Oliver had to see himself as a good guy. He needed to believe in the story more than she did. And then there was his need for control; Oliver had to be the man, to feel invincible, beyond reproach. She couldn’t do anything that would unsettle even one brick of their relationship, because then the entire structure might collapse.

But now, as Diana sat in a noisy, chic restaurant in Chapel Hill during the week of March Madness, at a table with a pure white tablecloth, and sipped her tea, tears stinging her eyes, rolling down her cheeks, she questioned everything she thought she ever knew. She saw empathy and understanding in the eyes of the two women she’d been secretly wishing away, emotions that came from knowledge and experience, and also sadness, like older sisters who knew they couldn’t bear their younger sibling’s pain. Diana would have to face the ugly truth on her own: She had married a man who not only didn’t love her; he wasn’t capable of love. She had married a man who didn’t even love himself. She didn’t love a man; she loved a mirror. And that was the harshest and most frightening realization of all, because denying Oliver was essentially denying her own reflection and the flesh and blood and heart and soul that comprised it, and if she did that, what was left? Who was she?

“It wouldn’t be that hard, you know,” Jewels said.

“What wouldn’t be that hard?” Bert asked.

Jewels pulled a compact from her handbag, refreshed her lipstick, smacked her lips. “Murdering someone.” She replaced the compact, made a point of looking at Bert. “We’re
all
smart women. We could pull it off.”

“Thank you for your confidence, Jewels,” Bert said sarcastically.

Diana looked around to see if anyone was listening to our conversation, but nothing could possibly be heard over the loud, tinny hum of the crowd. “Jewels, what are you saying?” She wiped her eyes and cheeks with the cloth napkin.

“I’m saying, perhaps
we
shouldn’t wait until we’re eighty-two to be happy. I’m saying we should kill the bastard.”

Diana and Bert stared at Jewels in disbelief.

“Are you serious?” Diana asked.

“Oh for God’s sake,” Jewels said and laughed. “Look at the two of you. Of course I’m kidding.”

Diana let out a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank God.”

“Enough of this,” Jewels said. “What I want to know is where you got those boots, Diana. I’m thinking I should get the exact same pair.”

The conversation shifted then to our latest passive-aggressive pastime: fucking with Oliver’s head. Just the month before, Jewels and Bert had dyed and styled their hair to match Diana’s, and the last several months we’d been charging up our credit cards with unnecessary, extravagant expenditures.

“Has Oliver said anything to either of you?” Jewels asked.

“Not me,” Diana said. “He did mention my Visa being over the limit last month, but he didn’t seem at all upset.”

“How about you, Bert?”

“Nothing. Not that I spend as much as the two of you, but I’ve actually started buying our groceries at Whole Foods.”

“Impressive,” Jewels said. “And he hasn’t noticed?”

“He did look at me a little strange the last time I used one of the recycle bags to clean out the litter boxes.”

“You used a five-dollar recycle bag for dirty cat litter?” Jewels asked.

“It was only around three dollars I think, but yes,” Bert said. “I thought that was the point. It isn’t a pair of expensive boots, but it is honestly the best I can do. I’m trying.”

“I think it’s a great try, Bert,” Diana said.

“And definitely a statement about Whole Paycheck,” Jewels said.

“Whole Paycheck?” Bert asked.

“Never mind,” Jewels said.

“What about your leather sofa, Jewels?” Diana asked.

“I got it recovered,” Jewels said.

“You just bought it,” Bert said.

“I told Oliver it wasn’t quite the right shade of brown, that I wanted it to have a more grayish tone, as opposed to reddish. Here, I’ve got pictures on my phone. What do you think?”

“I can’t tell the difference,” Bert said.

“That’s exactly what Oliver said.” Jewels started laughing, and before long all three of us were.

But no matter how much petty satisfaction we got out of our little retaliation games, it didn’t change the fact that we were the ones who were really fucked. We loved a man who didn’t love us. We loved a man who couldn’t love. We loved a man who was consciously lying to us, consciously hurting us, and yet we couldn’t walk away, and though we may have had a fuzzy idea why, we didn’t totally understand the depth of the power he held over us. It was as if he’d cast a spell on us.

Yes, Diana may have finally seen Oliver for what he was, but like the rest of us, she was far from over him. Her emotions would continue to fluctuate. She’d feel oozy, desirable, safe, grateful, even relieved. Relieved he hadn’t left her. Relieved he still loved her. She’d feel weak, pitiful, cowardly, stupid, unattractive, utterly desolate. She’d feel loved. She’d feel betrayed. And one day soon, after she’d reached the heights of happiness and the depths of misery many times over, she’d buy a book on personality disorders, and as she read and read, and reread and reread, her heart would beat faster and faster, and her belly would gurgle, twist, then sour, the nausea increasing until she could no longer contain it, and she’d run to the bathroom, arrive just in time, and as she lay on the cold, hard tile floor she would admit to herself that Jewels
had been right about everything. Oliver’s stalking. Oliver’s manipulative charm. Oliver’s lies. Oliver’s selfishness. Oliver’s inability to love. Oliver’s lack of empathy.

And finally, she’d stop fighting her knowing, and give herself over to truth and fate. The man she’d loved, the man she’d married, was a sociopath, and sociopaths were incurable.

Two months after he gave me the Valentine’s Day card, which was one month after I’d seen the blue convertible in the church parking lot and three months before Daddy died, Ryan Anderson asked if it was okay if he walked me home after spelling practice. It was the first really nice day of the year. My initial thought was,
What took him so long?
I’d been following my Make Ryan Anderson Like Me plan like it was a religion. Then I got annoyed. The thing is, it had been a really great spelling practice day. I didn’t know four of the words—nelipot, accubation, wanweird, and vigesimation—and I couldn’t wait to get home and look them up. I was in a pickle. If I said no to Ryan’s invitation, I might not get another one. If I said yes, instead of using my walking time to mull over the four new words in my head, I’d be sweetly, nicely, and sincerely listening to Ryan’s every word. To top it off, I figured we’d probably walk slower, and when we finally did get to my house, it wouldn’t be polite not to offer him sweet tea, which meant we’d have to sit somewhere and drink it, and we’d probably end up talking some, all of which would delay my dictionary time even more. Then I had a profound thought. Under the circumstances, saying yes to Ryan Anderson meant I would be making a sacrifice, and making a sacrifice for a boy would put me in a whole other girl category, practically an exclusive
club. I mean every girl knows that boys are high maintenance, but only girls with steady boyfriends, or husbands, like Mama, can talk or complain about boys to each other. I had this vision of myself passing notes back and forth with the All That Girls.

“I’d be delighted,” I said—I’d heard Mama say that to people a lot when they asked her to do something, especially stuff she didn’t want to do—and I stretched my lips into the biggest possible smile I could.

“Do you want to stop at Dairy Queen on the way?” he asked.

Drat
. That would take even more time. Besides, I’ve never been big on runny ice cream. “Yes,” I said, with a little squeal. “I
love
Dairy Queen.”

Dairy Queen was filled with kids from school, including Ashley Adams, two of the All That Girls, Kelly Morgan and Gillian George, and Audu (short for Audubon) Kirkpatrick. Audu was the cutest boy in school behind Ryan, and he had the weirdest first name behind me. Apparently his mother was a big bird-watcher and a member of the Audubon Society. Their mission is to conserve and restore natural ecosystems focusing on birds, other wildlife, and their habitats for the benefit of humanity and the earth’s biological diversity.

“You know Picasso, right?” Ryan asked Audu, after we got in line behind him. Audu’s desk was right in front of mine at school.

“Yeah, sure,” he said. “Hey, Picasso.”

“Hey,” I said back.

Then he and Ryan started talking about soccer.

I looked around to see if Jeannine Glick (everybody called her “Stick”) was there. Jeannine was pretty much the only girl at school who ever talked to me, which should’ve made me happy but in all honesty didn’t because Jeannine was even more unpopular than me, she had really poor hygiene, yet right then and there I would’ve said hey to her just so Ryan would see that even without him introducing me, people said hey to me too. Kelly Morgan and Gillian George were sitting at one of the picnic tables out front pretending
they weren’t talking about me because they knew better than to talk about anyone Ryan was with. Periodically, Ashley Adams, who was waiting in line right in front of Audu, glared in my direction.

“Hi, Ryan,” she said, after she’d gotten her cone.

“Hey,” Ryan said. “You know Picasso, right?”
Was he a broken record?

Ashley didn’t even acknowledge me. “Well, I need to get going. See you tomorrow?”

She walked off before Ryan could answer.

“Hey,” Audu called after her. “Wait up. I’ll walk with you.” He turned to Ryan. “Later, dude.”

“Yeah, later,” Ryan said. He didn’t seem the least bit upset that Audu was walking Ashley home.

“What do you want?” Ryan asked when we got up to the window.

“Vanilla,” I said.

“Two vanilla cones,” Ryan said to the girl taking orders.

“I’d rather have mine in a cup,” I said to Ryan. I swear he looked at me like he couldn’t believe we both liked our ice cream the exact same way.

“Make that two vanillas in cups,” he said to the girl.

“What size?” the girl asked.

Like I couldn’t hear or something, Ryan repeated the girl’s question to me.

“Small,” I said.

“Smalls,” he said to the girl.

I reached into my backpack to get out my money.

“I’m paying,” he said, which really surprised me.

“Hi, Ryan,” Kelly said, as we passed by her picnic table. Gillian started giggling.